


Like a Bird

by NikoNotHere



Series: One-Shots [9]
Category: Rammstein
Genre: Animals, Comfort, Contemplation, First Arsch, Gen, Mild Angst, Reminiscing, Wistful, musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:20:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24905227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NikoNotHere/pseuds/NikoNotHere
Summary: Till Lindemann stumbles across a chicken after a First Arsch concert, and muses about his life.
Series: One-Shots [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2126496
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13
Collections: Rammstein - Flashback - June prompt





	Like a Bird

Till stuffed his hands in his pockets and kicked out at the long grass in the field. It was dark, and he wished he were more drunk than he currently was. It was always depressing going home after the shows, which is why he preferred to either follow a girl home, or at least be drunk enough to where he didn’t care about the long walk back to his bed, and wasn’t bothered by his constantly overworked mind.

A series of small noises caught his attention off to his left. He turned to look, but it was too dark to make anything out. Curious, Till started following the sounds. As he drew closer, he determined the noises came from a distressed chicken. The frantic clucks and sharp squawks got louder as he finally spotted the grass moving where the chicken presumably was running through. Till finally caught up to it, and was surprised to see it was flopping around on the ground, more like hopping and dragging itself rather than running like a normal chicken.

He reached down and grabbed the stumbling little chicken to examine it. Ah, it was one of the one’s he’d stolen earlier that day from a farmer’s coop and then used for the concert. Because Till felt the drums were a particularly boring instrument, he’d decided a few weeks back that he needed to spice things up somehow. Due to a combination of already needing to steal food as he and the rest of the band were incredibly broke, as well as wanting a spectacle, Till brought up the idea of putting live chickens in his drum set. He released them as he started playing, causing disoriented, frantic chickens to fly out and run around among the little crowds at the show. Everyone loved it, as chaos was a welcome release from their restricted, routine lives in the GDR.

Till held out the chicken at arm’s length, and felt a pang of sadness as he realized the source of its discomfort. One of the legs stuck out at a grotesque angle, bone and sinews poking out of the skin. Someone must have kicked or stepped on it during the show. 

“Shh, hush,” Till cooed at the shrieking, struggling bird as he tucked it tightly against himself, taking care to keep the broken leg out of the hold to ease its discomfort. He began stroking against its back and tightening his hold around it, trying to calm it down. He then gently moved its head up under its wing and held it firmly beneath it. The chicken made growling noises at him for a minute, but then quieted. Till was well familiar with chickens, as he was with most animals common around the farm areas near him. Normally the show chickens were gathered up near the end of the show and butchered back at their houses, feeding the band and anyone who bothered to follow them after the concerts. This particular one must have managed to limp away during the show.

Once the chicken had fully stilled, and seemed to be asleep by the soft rising and falling of its sides pressed against him, Till sighed. He walked back toward the dirt path he’d come from initially, but stopped at the fence. Instead of hopping over it, he jumped up and sat himself on top of it, gazing out through the darkness. Immediately after the concerts, he and his band and everyone who’d come would make a break for it, wary of police finding them at the abandoned houses and factories they played in. In order to avoid them, everyone would part ways and take a different route back to their homes. Tonight, Till had drawn the short end of the straw, failing to convince any of the few women at the show to either come home with him, or let him go with them.

With a sigh, Till continued to stroke the quiet bird. He felt a special bond with animals, regardless of the species. He sympathized with their simpler, yet more difficult way of lives, whether it be the chickens kept for eggs, cows for milk and meat, or even the wild badgers and foxes further out in the woods. He loved imagining what their day to day looked like: hunting for food, avoiding predators, or in the case of domestic livestock, wandering around their pens and eating with no cares in the world.

Till envied both sets of animals, the wild ones their freedom, and the domestic their ease of living. The untamed animals never worried about boundaries, police, breaking laws or staying within appropriate codes of conduct. The farm animals in turn never worried about filing their bellies, what job they had to perform or who they were letting down if they didn’t fulfill their “duties.” The ones who under-performed were simply slaughtered and eaten. They had direction in their lives, even if that direction was a single line from birth to death in the same farm pen, or running around the same fields to hunt bugs every day.

Of course, Till could have that kind of direction if he wished. He could quite easily follow his father’s wishes and go back to work at the factories producing various wood works, or even pursuing his part time basket weaving full-time. It seemed the more boring the job, the more in approval his father would be for him to do it.

As Till shifted on the fence, he felt a tiny stabbing pain in his abdomen. Absently, he rubbed a hand over the old wound, and was reminded yet again of his failed swimming career. He wondered almost daily whether that injury had been the biggest cause of his father’s dislike of him. He’d been seen as his family’s pride, and even potentially his country’s pride as he’d been on track for the Olympics. For probably the thousandth time, a wish coursed through him that his family could see that, even though he was good at something, it didn’t mean he enjoyed it. In fact, most of the time it ended up he hated the things he was good at. They became boring to him when he didn’t have to work hard or push himself to succeed.

Drums were still boring to him, as the songs his band played weren’t exactly difficult. He often had to improvise riffs or do stunts like with the chickens to keep himself engaged. Despite that, he still loved being part of the music and engaging the small crowds that showed up each time. The possible danger of being caught by the police only added to the excitement of performing. With only 90 minute concerts, lookouts at every show, and all their equipment staying on an easily moveable trailer, each night was both risky and thrilling.

The chicken began struggling in his grasp again, making clucks of annoyance and sharp chirps of pain. Till shushed it once more and held it tighter, and when that failed, he started quietly singing to it. It wasn’t anything special, just an old lullaby he vaguely recalled his grandmother singing to him as a kid. He didn’t have a great voice, he knew, but when he was alone with no fear of anyone hearing him, Till loved to sing. He didn’t think he’d actually move from behind the drums to the front of the stage with First Arsch, but he would be a liar if he said he didn’t dream about it sometimes. Especially with no audience and an empty stage, just himself alone and singing to fill a room with the noise— it sounded like such a beautiful thing, and something he’d never achieve, of course. He just had to hope he didn’t run out of ideas to keep his drumming from descending into the boring monotony that everything did with him. At least chickens didn’t worry about the future.

Once the bird had calmed once more, Till gently removed it from his side.  
“Sorry about your leg, little one,” he murmured. The bird would inevitably be found by someone else in the same situation as him later on, he thought as he readjusted his hold to its neck.

He snapped it quickly. It didn’t feel a thing.

Till pushed the lifeless head through one of his belt loops, dangling it at his side as he hopped back over the fence and walked the abandoned path home.


End file.
